I'm sick of sawdust.

Someone or other (I blame John) came up with this crazy idea of sanding down all the wood work on the upper stairs (the house is a bilevel), instead of recarpeting it, and varnishing it to match the wood paneling in our basement and to go with the laminate flooring. We will hopefully finish today. It's going to look amazing, but I have to say that I am heartily sick of sawdust.

New house?

I just got a new listing from my realtor that looks promising, so she's going to take pictures of it and one other house in Hidden Springs for us tomorrow. It's the size we need, and has the stucco John likes and the room count we need as well. We'll see how it goes!

Free at last! (Almost.)

I just paid off the last bit of our equity loan and a year and a half early at that. Man, it feels good to be free of that debt. We still have the credit card to go, but it's manageable and will be gone as soon as the house sells. It's been a long time coming, but there's finally light at the end of the tunnel. Now all we have to do is sell the house! We'll be replacing more carpet soon and the linoleum in the entry way is going to be replaced with laminate to match the kitchen, lv room, and hallway so hopefully the house will sell quickly after that (or before, either works for me).

Better days.

As mentioned, we are doing a lot better now. We've had several showings since we got home, which is always a good thing, and Jared has completely recovered. Jasmine has her yearly runny nose, but otherwise everyones healthy. Fargo/Moorhead is gearing up for the flood fight. They're doing it a bit early, but after getting caught off guard by how bad the flood was no one wants to take any chances. We don't have anything to worry about, since we don't live near the river, but John's parents get flooded in some way every year so we'll be keeping an eye out for that. Here's hoping we don't have the disaster we had last year!

Back to the drawing board, but at least the outline is still there

So, we lost the house in Idaho. Someone else made an offer that got in right before ours, and the bank kept us dangling for weeks and finally accepted his. Turned out great though because he did an inspection and found mildew problems in the crawl space under the house. He withdrew his offer, and the house went back on the market with another $25,000 off the price. It's now a cash only purchase because no bank will make a loan for it. We are just grateful that it wasn't our inspection money getting wasted this time. We ended up driving to Idaho and staying for a week and looking at a bunch of houses and areas to see what we liked, try to find a house to buy, etc. It was quite an adventure.
We didn't leave until 1:00 A.M. Sat morning (we planned on driving at night so the kids would sleep, but that was ridiculously late) because we were trying to tear the carpet out so my BIL could replace it with laminate flooring while we were gone and clean everything else for an open house that would occur while we were gone; ran out of gas in Montana on the way out (the gas sign came on and 3 miles later the car died, wasn't what I would call a good warning); we managed to cruise a few miles closer to the next gas station only for John to realize it was the wrong direction and we were then 5 miles away from a gas station (a nice guy picked him up after a mile or two and gave him a ride there and back); we arrived Sun evening and by 10:00 P.M. Mon evening I was in the emergency room with Jared; by midnight Jared was in surgery for appendicitis and he didn't get released until 8:45 P.M. on Tue leaving me to take 5 kids to look at houses while John stayed with him at the hospital; by Wed Jared was climbing mountains (literally); and Fri right before we headed out of town, we finally agreed to look at one more subdivision (we had been avoiding it because the properties had very little land attached) and John absolutely loved it.
We put several hundred miles on the van while we were there and didn't manage to find the place John wanted to live until the last day as we headed out of town. At least we did find the place; otherwise I would be seriously annoyed and feeling like we wasted all that money and time. On the way home we made such good time that we didn't bother to stop for the night and made it as far as Bismarck by the time for a noon showing of Avatar (we promised the kids they could see it 3D in the theater if they did a good job on the drive back). Got to the theater only to realize that it was cash only and the ATM didn't work. Tried the ATM again and that time it worked, got up to the cashier and she refused to sell me tickets because Jasmine was with us. I just about killed someone. So, we packed back up, grabbed some lunch (which was pretty sparse for me since the drive through at Arby's only gave me my fries and drink and forgot my sandwich; I ordered mozzarella sticks too, so it wouldn't have been so bad but I shared them with the kids since I thought I had a sandwich waiting).
Made it back to Fargo in time for the 4:50 showing of Avatar (just drove straight to the theater) even though we ran out of gas again (same as before; I was watching the gas gauge and it went from 1/4 tank to empty in 5 min flat; at least this time we had a full can with us and could fill up enough to get to the next gas station) and finally made it home at 10:00. That was a GREAT homecoming; a kitchen pipe had burst before we left and apparently the contractor didn't finish all the repairs and cleanup (turns out he had a heart attack scare that weekend of the open house, but everything should have been done by Mon and the open house was planned for several days later on Sun and his episode wasn't until Fri; long story short, it should have been done well before anything happened), and my sister didn't finish cleaning up either. So Sun we had to clean, John had to finish the repairs and put things back together, and we were still cleaning when the first and only couple showed up (Sun was US vs Canada for hockey in the Olympics; no realtor had good open houses that day).
On a positive note, the new laminate floorings look great. On a not so positive note, they look so good that they emphasize how bad some of the carpet looks and we now will probably end up replacing more carpet. At least Habitat for Humanity's store has some that is acceptable and is cheaper than I can get it in the store. Plus, no labor fees because my BIL can lay it for us.
I think I'm good for now; no more family vacations for a LONG time.